Dangerous Products in the Home

Trial lawyers are often on the lookout for dangerous products. We are up to date on the latest recalls and companies that have a reputation for making questionable products. When shopping for our families, we often look for the presence or lack of certain safety features that others would not because we have spent years dealing with the damage and trauma dangerous products can cause a family.

Common household items can often pose unknown hazards. Button batteries, commonly used in automobile key fobs, watches, and many toys, have become a recent hazard for small children. Over a 14 year period ending in 2010, approximately 40,000 ER visits resulted from children ingesting batteries, and over half of these cases involved these button batteries. Button batteries pose several serious health issues for children that have resulted in severe injury and death. Choking is a major concern that can happen immediately. Chemical burns to internal organs can also result is serious health issues and can be difficult to diagnose because symptoms often do not appear until days after a child has ingested a battery.

Many toy makers now require a screwdriver to enter the battery compartment of their toys. While annoying to parents, this is a protection against small children ingesting batteries that is useful. Some makers of these batteries have ignored the problem, some have begun to warn against the problem, and others have begun to take action to protect children from these now-known dangers. For instance, a recent trip to the drug store revealed a company with a two-fold approach to preventing children from swallowing these button batteries. They place a warning directly on the battery to let parents know of the danger. They also seal the packaging for the batteries so that scissors are needed to open them. This is the proactive approach to preventing known harm that some companies are taking to protect the public. Unfortunately, it can often take years of knowing about a problem and many lawsuits before some companies finally come around to preventing such accidents. For some companies, customer safety is important enough. For others, the threat of money damages from their product harming the public is what is needed to improve product safety.

The dangerous product and product liability attorneys at Jinks, Crow & Dickson, PC, work tirelessly on behalf of our clients in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi to pursue claims against product manufacturers that create products and don’t do everything in their power to make sure they are safe for everyone to use that comes in contact with them. We have represented victims and families of victims of dangerous products of all kinds.

Unfortunately, we have products all around us that have dangers in them that we may not think about which are often dangers that companies know about but have not yet addressed. The role of injury attorneys who pursue claims against product makers is to compensate their injured clients and their families. In doing so, product liability attorneys also serve as a financial incentive for companies to make their products safer for everyone.